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POP MUSIC : MIXED MEDIA : In Short, Gabriel Offers Dramatic Point of View : ****”POV” : Peter Gabriel : <i> Virgin Music Video ($19.98)</i>

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Remember how, in the early days of video, everyone feared that visual images would sabotage the integrity of a song by trivializing it or forcing a single definition on what was often best left to individual interpretation?

We’re now a decade into the era of MTV, and video has, if anything, enriched the pop experience by giving some of our finest artists--including Don Henley, Sting and Gabriel--added canvas upon which to work. Gabriel’s short-form videos have been especially thoughtful and appealing works that extended the sophistication and humanity in the British rock star’s music.

Gabriel continues to reflect those qualities in this 85-minute concert video, mostlytaken from a 1987 performance in Greece. The introduction of band members at the start is too cutesy and some of the backstage glimpses are uninvolving, but the music itself in “POV” (for Point of View) is strongly framed as Gabriel adds to his own sense of performance drama with brief film montages.

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This added color--drawn from both formal documentary footage and his own home movies--poignantly accents the way many of Gabriel’s most moving songs, including “Don’t Give Up” and “Biko,” serve as both sweeping social statements and intimate portraits of personal struggle.

Videocassettes are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to three (good) to five (a classic).

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